Educational Discipline Models

Over these past few months I’ve started doing some more formal research into different discipline models to support 121’s approach. Although what we are doing doesn’t fall neatly into any one model I found resonance with a few of them.

Glasser’s Model: Making Choices

William Glasser makes use of what is called the ‘class meeting’ method, where the class together decides on what behaviour is acceptable or not and what the consequences of negative behaviour will be. This model is based on the idea that learners are rational beings capable of making decisions about their own behaviour, It forces learners to continuously make choices for themselves. When a learner misbehaves they are given a clear choice: You can stop doing that or you can face either this consequence or that consequence. Learners are asked: "What choices did you have? Why did you make that choice? Did you like the result? What have you learned?"

This is an approach 121 makes us of all the time in detention. At the start of every detention session, the main facilitator (which we call the ‘pilot’) walks the class through a process of defining what behaviour is or is not acceptable in the detention session. This is approached in a different and creative way each week. The facilitators then outline the consequences of negative behaviour. Usually these are a series of consequences learners can choose from. For example, if they are disrupting their small group, they may either spend the rest of the session with the pilot at the front of the class, or with the teacher on duty elsewhere in the school. Most choose to sit with the pilot and still be part of what is happening.

Ginott’s Model: Modeling the behaviour you want to see

In this model, key is modeling what you want learners to do. This forms the backbone of our approach at 121. It’s no use having a program on controlling your anger if we as facilitators keep losing our tempers! We also see no point in yelling at learners to keep quiet. Rather than reducing the noise, we would only be adding to it! We make use of silence as a form of silencing the group. The pilot will stand at the front of the room and wait with a silent ‘presence’, catching the eye of learners that continue to talk until the group comes to quietness. This takes longer but saves the pilot their voice and their energy!

Ginott stresses that teachers need to speak to learners as they would want to be spoken to. Sarcasm is seen as hazardous, as is attacking the learner personally. Rather, educators are encouraged to address what the learner is doing as opposed to labeling the learner themselves as being ‘bad’ or ‘disruptive’. “Labeling disables”. Ginott argues that teachers are at their best when they help learners develop their trust in themselves and their ability to control their own behaviour.

There are several other models that we’ll explore in later blog posts. What many of these models have in common is that they encourage learners to take personal responsibility. Rather then needing to rely on external factors to keep them in line, they need to learn self control and, paradoxically, the freedom that comes from imposing limits and boundaries on ourselves.

Update, October, 2008

121 continues to be a growing experience for all of us. Just as we think things are moving in one direction, things change and we find ourselves being stretched into something new. These past few months have held some wonderful ups but also some unexpected downs that we don’t always know how to process. But again and again we are assured of God’s guidance and leading.

New Facilitators on Board

In May we spoke about our detention program at a local church and got eight university students on board to help as facilitators in our detention program. This brought our team to a total of twelve. Between May and September we had two fantastic terms of detention at Pretoria North and Clapham High Schools. It was a good time of growing our team and sharpening our program. Over the past few months we can really see a change in the way we have learnt to handle some very challenging situations with patience and grace!

Alternative Ways to Discipline

One of the lessons we’ve been learning is how to respond to discipline challenges with firmness and love. We don’t want learners to walk all over us but not do we want to be cruel and unkind to people who have been created by a God who loves them and wants to draw them back to Him. In struggling to strike this balance, we’ve learnt so much about alternative ways to achieve a positive atmosphere in a classroom without needing to raise our voices or lose control.

Red Alert Program

We ran a Red Alert program (a three-week program for learners that repeatedly attend detention) with six learners in August which was really successful. Our facilitators felt they really could engage with the learners on a meaningful level and we saw real life change taking place.

Time and again we realize that our program is not a quick-fix solution but something that goes much further and deeper. We have learners returning to detention repeatedly who at first challenge our authority at every turn, disrupting the program in every way they can. But after a few weeks we start seeing a change in them. They start looking at us differently, seeing us as someone worth respecting rather than to opposing. They start listening to what we have to say, and begin to grapple with the issues we place before them.

Losing and Gaining Schools

One of the major downs that we’ve experienced is that Clapham High has decided to end their relationship with us. This was an enormous blow as we felt we were making good progress there and found the school a fantastic learning ground for our facilitators. The school felt, though, that they wanted a more aggressive approach to discipline. We’ve been marketing our program to new schools and trust that other doors will open.

A Stretching Experience

From the very beginning, 121 has been an organization that has stretched the faith and character of each of us that have been involved. We’ve been stretched tremendously on the strategic and managerial side, having to learn to let go a lot of our own ideas so that God’s plan can take place. We’ve also been stretched significantly in the classroom where our weaknesses are sometimes ruthlessly exposed by teenagers testing our resolve! In all of this, we have found God to be faithful, and to work all things for the good in ways we could not have imagined!

Learning to Choose

One of the themes that runs through much of our detention material is that we can’t always choose our circumstances but we can choose how we respond to them. This is a difficult concept to relay as many of us live in a perpetual state of victimhood.

If we’re struggling with something, more likely than not, we blame our circumstances or people in our lives. If only we had had more opportunities while growing up, we wouldn’t be in this situation. If only people would give me a chance, I could prove myself. If only I had a bit more money or resources, I could really make a difference. Yet, all around us there are people doing amazing things with very limited resources or opportunities.

We don’t want to teach learners that whatever dream they have is possible. Some dreams are unrealistic or selfish. Some dreams are inappropriate or don’t match the particular resources, abilities or gifts of a particular learner. However, we also don’t want learners to have the perception that they are trapped in their circumstances.

This is particularly relevant in the school context, where a lot of things happen that frustrate learners but which they can do nothing about. Our challenge to them is to change in the system what they can change but to learn to work with those things that they can’t. If a school has certain rules to help it function effectively, learners need to learn to cooperate with those rules to their best advantage. If a certain teacher picks on them, and all the ways they’ve tried to change that have failed, they need to find a way to cope with the situation as best they can.

When they leave school and enter the working world they may well encounter a boss who picks on them or organizational rules that don’t suit them, but they need to learn how to cope with that in a way that works. We don’t want learners who passively accept injustice. But we also don’t want learners who aggressively fight a system that they cannot change in ways that are inappropriate and self destructive.

We want them to assess their circumstances realistically. This includes assessing their own abilities and limitations. From here, they can begin to see what choices they do and don’t have. We want them to realize that within the scope of the choices they do have there is actually a lot they can do to make their circumstances significantly better.

I can’t change the fact that when I get to a detention session there may be no electricity so that I can't run our multi-media presentation. The venue may be in a mess. The learners may be overly energetic and rowdy. The facilitators assisting me may be late. All these things I have no control over. But I can choose what to do with these many challenges. I can turn them into a learning opportunity not only for myself, but for the entire detention session and for all those reading this blog!

A Clean Environment Inside and Out

At 121 we run the detention program at high schools. Schools give us a classroom to use and send us learners from grades 8 to 12 who disobeyed school rules during the previous week. Over the past few years we have made an interesting discovery: the cleaner and better organized the classroom, the better behaved the learners.

There is something about a messy classroom that leaves one feeling one should be messy in the way one relates to others and as a group. The entire atmosphere becomes messy and it becomes increasingly more difficult to maintain control.

At one of the schools there is a classroom we really appreciate. It is always immaculately clean and neat. It is also very cosy. It has interesting and colourful pictures covering its walls. It has large colour photos of learners enjoying class outings. It also has brightly coloured cards stating the class boundaries. For example, the cards state things like ‘respect each other’ and ‘listen to each other’. The moment learners walk into this classroom we sense a difference. It is as if the atmosphere of the classroom rubs off on all of us as we walk in and we all begin to internalize our environment.

At another school we have noticed something similar. We have used the same venue over a number of years. For much of those years the venue, which is full of books and is carpeted, was badly looked after and messy. Books were strewn all over the place and papers and pencil sharpening littered the floor. But this past year the classroom has been neat and organized. There are interesting posters on the wall. The books have been neatly shelved. There is a sense of respect for books and learning. We have noticed a change in learner behaviour.

Before, learners may not have thought twice about dropping papers on the floor or tearing pages out of books strewn about the classroom. Now they tend to throw papers in the bin and books are handled with care. Before, we saw learners scratching on desks. Now that the desks are neatly arranged and the classroom clean, learners seem more reluctant to graffiti the furniture.

Sometimes we look for major interventions to influence learner behaviour but perhaps all it takes is simple things like keeping the classroom clean.

The Kinds of Adults We’re Creating

Quite often when we describe the alternative approach to discipline in high schools that we use at 121, people ask whether a good caning wouldn’t be the solution to disciplinary problems. Here is our response:

A caning is a great short term solution. If you punish a learner enough with corporal punishment and instill sufficient fear in him then perhaps for the duration of his school years he will tow the line. But the question we ask is, what kind of an adult are we creating? Our interest is not in having a learner be well behaved according to the school system for the five years of high schools. Our interest is in instilling values in a young person that will affect the kind of adult they become long after school is finished.

This kind of intervention is not a quick-fix and it doesn’t happen over night. Values need to be taught repeatedly over a period of time. But more importantly than teaching values ‘from the front’ (as information relayed to an audience) they need to be modeled and lived. It is as we model the values we teach that learners start to take notice.

A prime example of this is learners who test us. There are learners that go out of their way to test our boundaries and see what it will take to make us lose our tempers. They’re not testing us so much as they are testing the values we teach. When we look at the topic of anger, we teach them how to turn their anger into effective communication. Instead of raging at another person they learn to channel their anger to something more positive. Of course, at the first opportunity learners test this on us. What would it take to make us angry? If they were to make us angry enough, would we rage at them, thereby undermining our message? This is where lived values become more important than any information we could relay from the front. It is learning in action.

We would love to influence the way learners behave at school. We would love to see them practicing values that are both positive for them and for the people around them in the school environment. But even more than this, we would love these young people to internalize these values for the long term. We would like to impact lives so that we are impacting the very kinds of adults we are creating.

We could give young people a good smack and assume this sorts out their bad behaviour. But what are we depositing into their lives that they can carry into their adult years? Every intervention we design at 121 has the goal of our broader society in mind. Are we releasing into society young people who are able to make a positive contribution to society as adults? This is the real challenge of all educators.

Interesting Links

There are two interesting links to make note of:

1) 121 is part of a community forum in Pretoria North. We have now been listed on their website and brochure. Throught the forum we stay in touch with what is happening in the welfare world, from government policy down to what local organizations are doing.

2) The Department of Education is putting an 'early warning system' into place in schools in Gauteng in response to the increase in school violence. Named Project Hlayisika (to be safe), this system will include putting up fences and teaching children about conflict resolution. You can read more about it here. Let's keep praying for our school's, and pray for us as we try to make a difference in the school's we are currently working in.

Starting the Year on a High Note

On the 7th of January, while still just waking up to a new year, Ian and Cori presented the 121 detention program to the staff at Clapham High School in Queenswood (Pretoria). The response seemed positive and we’ll be running our detention program there every Thursday afternoon. Along with this we’ll still be running our program at Pretoria North High on Friday afternoons. Ian and Cori also met with Centurion High and are looking to start a program there within the next few months. This is very exciting stuff, to have expanded from being active in one school to now being involved at three schools, with others indicating their interest as well.

As far as our team goes, things have also started on a high note. We met with our facilitators to start preparing for the year ahead last week. Our team has expanded somewhat, with a couple of fresh young guys joining us! Some of our regular facilitators are going to start ‘head’ facilitating the program allowing us to run two teams at different schools. We’ve also been blessed with two sets of equipment (projectors, lap-tops, sound systems etc.) allowing us to be that much more effective.

There are usually forty learners at a detention session. We divide these learners into groups of ten, each group with a facilitator. We then have a head facilitator who walks the group through a program of group discussion, activities, games, worksheets that need to be filled out and a DVD clip. The kind of content covered seeks to engage learners on quite a deep level, exploring some of the positive and negative issues that may be underlying the behaviours that land them on detention.

Our term program includes a monthly training session for facilitators and a quarterly fun day where facilitators and their families can get to know each other better and relax after a demanding school term!

Some items for prayer:

• For our facilitators, that they will be well prepared and sensitive to what God wants to do through them in the lives of learners
• For our program, that it will hit the mark and be relevant to learners
• For our equipment and the load shedding which may compromise our power-intensive program!
• For the learners we interact with and the schools we engage, that real and lasting change may become evident
• For sufficient funds to meet our budget needs